Yesterday saw the RedR-HFP conference ''Hard Realities and Future Necessities: The Role of the Private Sector in Humanitarian Efforts'. In his keynote, U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator and head of OCHA John Holmes highlighted the lack of a systematic and productive engagement between the two sets of actors, pointed to innovations as a key area for working together going forward, and made mention of a number of innovations including some that were showcased at the ALNAP Innovations Fair (see a Reuters Alertnet article on his speech here).

Anne, Princess Royal, President of RedR, spoke on the importance of having a broad understanding of what constituted the private sector, and in particular to not exclude national and local actors.

ALNAP was asked to present in the Morning Panel session on 'The Corporate-Humanitarian Record To Date'. I gave a presentation which drew on 2007 GPPI-ODI work on business engagement in humanitarian relief, as well as ideas from the recent ALNAP work on innovations in humanitarian action.  

The key 'take away' messages from my presentation were as follows:

• The humanitarian caseload is increasing, the system is stretched, the 'new normal' means that collaboration is not an option but a necessity
• We tend to learn and collaborate in the same way – within existing paradigms, and “catastrophe-first” - the tsunami saw a massive spike in business-humanitarian engagement which has since fallen away
• Corporate engagement is clearly more than just buzz, but we need more strategic clarity around how to engage and why to engage
• If effectively positioned, resourced and managed, humanitarian innovations can be the ideal entry point for enhanced, focused corporate-humanitarian partnerships. Such partnerships require effective brokerage and a clear sense of complementary competencies.
• Ultimately, we need to move beyond 'catastrophe first' approaches of collaboration toward putting vulnerability first.

Subsequent sessions focused on the future possibilities of collaboration between the two sectors and on the perspective of local corporate players. One of the presentations was from Les Baillie of Safaricom, who were involved in a recent innovation process with Concern focusing on the use of mobiles for cash transfers in the post-election violence in Kenya. For more on this, take a look at the recently published Innovation Case Study, one of a new series of ALNAP products highlighting different innovations processes for the benefit of the sector.  

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